Statement by Ambassador LIU Jieyi at the Security Council Debate on Cooperation Between the United Nations and the African Union

2016/11/18

China thanks Senegal for convening today's meeting and we welcome Foreign Minister Ndiaye as he presides over today's meeting. We listened very attentively to the statements by Assistant Secretary-General Wane, Special Representative of the Secretary-General Menkerios, Ambassador António and Mr. Kaberuka.

The African Union (AU) is committed to African countries' strength in unity, cooperation, solidarity and to promoting the resolution of African issues in African ways and safeguarding peace and stability on the African continent. The international community universally commends its efforts.

In recent years, the United Nations and the AU have continued to advance cooperation in the area of peace and security, jointly work towards a political settlement of the questions of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, together deploy forces in the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Mission in Darfur, engage in post-war reconstruction in Liberia and Sierra Leone and play a positive role in safeguarding peace and stability on the African continent. China supports the strengthening of AU and United Nations cooperation in the area of peace and security and building partnerships of cooperation to safeguard regional peace and security. China would like to highlight the following points with regard to strengthening the cooperation between the United Nations and the AU in the area peace and security.

First, we should jointly uphold the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. The Security Council has the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. The AU is an important platform for African countries to collectively respond to threats and challenges in the region. In accordance with Chapter VIII of the Charter of the United Nations, the strengthening of cooperation between the AU and the United Nations is conducive to maintaining peace and stability in Africa. The United Nations should continue to support the African Union in its efforts to settle disputes through such peaceful means as dialogue, consultation, good offices and mediation, while respecting States' sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity.

Secondly, we should encourage shared notions in promoting collective security. The countries of the world are interdependent, with intertwined security. Parties should adhere to a common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable concept of security and seek and promote security through cooperation. The cooperation between the United Nations and the African Union should be based on the concept of common security. They must strengthen strategic planning and engage in comprehensive cooperation in conflict prevention, resolving regional hotspot issues, safeguarding peace and peacebuilding so as to achieve win-win cooperation and common security.

Thirdly, we should coordinate and cooperate better, so as to promote the settlement of regional issues. The African Union has ample experience with good offices and mediation and advantages in geography, history and culture. Therefore, it has a unique role to play in resolving contentious issues in Africa. China supports the United Nations in listening to the viewpoints of the AU and African countries so as to ensure that all parties, in the process of reaching political settlements on contentious African issues, can make full use of their respective advantages, complement each other, strengthen their coordination, take into account the root causes of regional hotspots, scale up the AU's input and thereby develop comprehensive and targeted solutions to issues.

Fourthly, we should support the AU in building the capacity of its collective security mechanism. Scaling up the AU's capacity-building in peace and security is conducive to better efforts in managing good offices and mediation and assuming more responsibilities in peacekeeping. It promotes the comprehensive settlement of regional issues. We hope that the United Nations will provide more support to building the African Union's collective security mechanism in personnel training, setting up institutions, logistical support and funding, and that it will support building the African Standby Force and rapid response force in combating threats posed by terrorism and piracy in the region and effectively enhance the capacity of collective African security.

China attaches great importance and is strongly committed to promoting cooperation with the African Union in peace and security. So far, it has already participated in 16 United Nations peacekeeping operations in Africa, and there are 2,600 Chinese peacekeepers in missions such as in Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Darfur, and in the Sudan and Liberia.

At the summit commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the United Nations, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that within the next five years China would provide $100 million to the African Union in military assistance grants to support building up the African Standby Force and the crisis rapid response force. Last year at the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, President Xi Jinping and the African leaders unanimously decided that the Chinese-African relationship would be upgraded to a comprehensive strategic partnership and highlighted that, in the coming three years, the emphasis would be placed on implementing cooperation plans in the following 10 areas: industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure, financing, green development, trade, facilitating investment, improving people's livelihoods, and eradicating poverty, public health, people-to-people exchanges and peace and security. China will continue to participate in United Nations peacekeeping in Africa and will help African countries to strengthen their capacity-building in national defense, anti-terrorism, riot prevention, customs management and immigration control.

The coordinators' meeting of the implementation of the outcome of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was successfully concluded in July in Beijing, which further promoted practical cooperation between China and Africa in many areas. China is willing to work jointly with African countries and actively implement the outcome of the Johannesburg Summit and safeguard peace and stability on the African continent. We are committed to developing a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation at its core and building a community of shared destiny.